


Substance

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: In line with canon, Kissing, M/M, Men Crying, Movie Spoilers, No Plot/Plotless, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-03 15:57:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12751500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Loki’s hand is still upraised, his palm still open like he’s showing off the weight of the projectile for Thor’s consideration; but Thor’s not looking at the stopper, not looking at the way Loki’s fingers are trembling very slightly against the weight of it, as if even this minimal weight is a little too much for him to bear." Thor and Loki finally make it to the same place at the same time.





	Substance

It’s a little thing, to carry so much weight.

Thor doesn’t even think about the action as he reaches for the stopper of the bottle set against the table in his quarters, doesn’t pause to contemplate the heft of the silver in his hand. It’s habit, ingrained over too many betrayals and too many disappointments, and even if he’s smiling now there’s a bitterness to it, the leading edge of frustration even before he’s seen proof of what he knows without asking to be true. He knows his brother, knows Loki as well as he knows the grip of the hammer lost now as a relic of the past; as lost as those days of anything like trust, of anything like intimacy. There are no chains on Loki now, no restraints binding him physically to this space; and so Thor looks back at his brother, and he lets his smile flash bright like lightning, and he hefts the stopper in his hand and feels all the weight of certain disappointment smack against his palm.

“If you were here, I might even give you a hug,” he says; and he lifts his arm, and he tosses the stopper towards the image of Loki, towards that struggling smile and those ever-scheming eyes and those narrow shoulders that are no more here now than Loki ever is, when Thor reaches out for him. The weight flies true, the compact density of the shape enough to send it curving a smooth arc through the air between them; Thor is already waiting for the flicker as Loki’s illusion gives way to the physical force, already expecting the clatter as the stopper falls to the floor behind the other. Loki doesn’t even look at the weight, doesn’t show any indication of tracking its motion; and then his hand comes up, his fingers lift to interrupt that smooth trajectory, and the stopper lands against his palm with a dull  _thud_  that Thor can feel like his own thunder grounding out against his spine.

Loki doesn’t look away from Thor’s face. There’s that smile still lurking at the corners of his mouth, the taut one that never quite makes it to the hurt behind his eyes; but it’s flickering, now, as if his expression is trying to shudder into some new form it can’t reach without the safety of his illusion to hide behind. “I’m here.”

Thor stares for a long moment. Loki’s hand is still upraised, his palm still open like he’s showing off the weight of the projectile for Thor’s consideration; but Thor’s not looking at the stopper, not looking at the way Loki’s fingers are trembling very slightly against the weight of it, as if even this minimal weight is a little too much for him to bear. He’s looking at Loki, gazing full into the strange, aching want behind those eyes and the tremor of that sardonic smile; and then he’s taking a breath, and he’s striding forward without hesitating in the action.

His steps are long, ground-covering things; in the smaller space of the ship’s cabin he can cross the distance in a matter of strides, between the rhythm of heartbeats. Loki’s smile flickers as Thor steps in, his smirk giving way to soft-mouthed uncertainty as his shoulders tip back; for a moment his weight is angling backwards, he looks like he’s about to flinch away or bolt outright from his brother’s approach. But Thor is coming in too quickly, or Loki is too uncertain about his retreat; and then Thor’s arms are coming up, and Loki is there in his reach, and when he closes his hold around the image it’s his brother in his span of his arms, the warm, solid  _reality_  of Loki pressing against him. Loki stumbles at the motion, it feels like he’s on the verge of losing his balance outright for a moment as he tries to pull back and lean in at one and the same time; but Thor just holds him the tighter, and after a moment Loki recovers his balance, at least enough to stand on his own feet while Thor holds him.

It’s an awkward hug. There’s no give to Loki’s shoulders, no sense of surrender in the line of his body; he’s just standing there, his arms fallen heavy to his sides and his shoulders braced as if for a blow and the whole of him trembling like a tree in a storm as Thor holds him. But it doesn’t matter, not really, it doesn’t make a difference whether Loki hugs back or not, whether he knows  _how_  to respond or not; because he’s present, he’s  _here_ , and that’s enough for Thor to have his arms around him and pull the taut line of his brother’s body in close against his own. Neither of them speak, to make a joke or to offer any kind of sincerity; it’s enough, Thor thinks, to have this, to let the strength of his arms speak for him as loudly here as it does on the battlefield against his enemies. He holds, and he holds, and he holds; and then Loki takes a breath against his shoulder, the sound catching in the back of his throat clearly even before he ducks his head as if to hide his face against Thor’s shirt. There’s another moment of hesitation, a breath as Loki’s shoulders shudder in time with the stick of his breathing; and then his arms lift, his hands come up, and his hold closes with tentative uncertainty around Thor in front of him.

Thor can’t catch his breath. There’s no force to Loki’s hold -- it would be hard to know it was there at all, in other circumstances -- but he can feel every point of contact like electricity, as if he’s crackling all over again with that lightning that roared through him on the battlefield of the homeworld they have left destroyed in their wake. Loki’s arms are shaking, his muscles straining as if the effort of holding onto his brother is an exhausting, impossible strain instead of the ease it ought to be; he still has the stopper clutched in his hand, Thor can feel the weight of it digging in against his back where Loki is holding onto him. His head is ducked down, his forehead pressing as hard against Thor’s shoulder as any other part of him is; and Thor can feel the rhythm of the other’s breathing against his shirt, can feel the warmth of Loki’s stuttering inhales as clearly as he can hear the catch of emotion even half-muffled as it is against his clothes.

“Loki,” he says, feeling his voice vibrate into the space between them, like it’s gaining weight just from the pressure of having someone else pressing against him, of having the warmth of his brother actually here and in his arms for the first time in far longer than Thor cares to remember. His hand comes up without his hold loosening, his fingers drawing up across Loki’s back to press against his shoulder, to weight against the fall of dark hair curling over the edge of his collar. Loki’s shoulders tense, his head presses in harder; for a moment his hold on Thor in front of him tightens, flexing to sudden, bruising force, as if he’s afraid the other is going to let him go, as if he’s trying to hold onto something he knows he’ll lose and doesn’t want to give up. Thor finds comfort at his lips without trying, hears himself humming reassurance before he has even thought; and then his hand is sliding up and into Loki’s hair, and his head is turning in, and he’s murmuring comfort against the side of the other’s head, offering comfort from some soft, incoherent space against the inside of his chest that hardly distinguishes between words and pure sound. “Ssh, it’s okay, it’s alright, I’ve got you.”

Loki’s arms tighten again, flexing tight as if they’re cramping before easing back once more. “I don’t need your help,” he says, the words stripped of any fire and down to childish petulance by the angle of his head and the audible catch of tears in the back of his throat.

Thor snorts a laugh. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.” He still has his hand in Loki’s hair; he’s stroking through it now, winding his fingers into the strands and urging them back to fall smooth and sleek over the other’s shoulders without interruption. He’s never noticed, before, how dark it is, how absolute the shadows of color are; there’s something entrancing about it, like he’s running his fingers through an absence of light rather than anything with real presence, as if he’s imagining the texture of the strands against his hand. But there  _is_  a texture, smooth and soft and silkier than he imagined it would be, the strands thicker than his own and falling in looser waves than his even before his unwanted haircut; and there’s a scent too, like wood ash and the chill of winter have somehow tangled themselves into the dark locks. Thor turns his head in to follow the motion of his fingers, shutting his eye as he presses his nose in just over the curve of Loki’s ear and breathes in that strange half-foreign, almost-familiar scent.

“Are you really that upset about your hair?” Loki asks without moving his head. Thor opens his eye and blinks in an attempt to draw himself back to reality; his fingers are curling in against Loki’s hair, he has all but a few curling locks caught now in the span of his fingers. Loki’s breathing has eased, a little, or maybe he’s just collected himself enough to make a persuasive act of composure; his hold hasn’t loosened perceptibly, in any case, and even when Thor pulls back by an inch he doesn’t let go, just lifts his head from the other’s shoulder and tilts his chin up like he’s fighting himself back to calm by force of will more than anything else. His eyes are colored with a suggestion of red, the soft skin around them marked by the proof of the tears that have vanished into Thor’s shirtfront; the green of them is the more striking by contrast. His jaw is set, his mouth is tense; he looks like he’s bracing for a fight, or maybe like he’s trying to start one. His fingers are still twisted to a fist around that weight Thor threw at him; Thor wonders if Loki even remembers he’s holding it.

“No,” Thor says, answering the edge of almost-a-fight in Loki’s tone with the even calm of his own. He’s lost far more than his hair in the last few days: father, hammer, planet, even the lopsided angle of vision is a reminder of the absence of something he always has taken for granted, before now. Compared to that the strange lightness against his scalp is nothing. His attention slides away from Loki’s eyes and back, to where the weight of the other’s hair is curling towards waves around the familiar details of his face; his fingers shift, sliding in through the dark to let another few locks slide free. “I was just admiring yours.”

Loki doesn’t say anything. When Thor looks back to his face there’s a strange tension at his forehead, a crease forming itself between the dark of his brows; he looks like he’s fighting with some weighty emotion, like he’s trying to hold back another rush of tears and is too proud to duck his head and let shadow do it for him. It’s strange to see the expression on his face, to see the almost-hurt of something too strong for him to hold back trembling at his mouth and tense against his jaw; Thor wonders if he wants to run, if maybe Loki regrets giving in to this measure of physical closeness when an escape is infinitely farther away than the ease of undoing an illusion spell. If he does it’s a lesser emotion; his hold still hasn’t loosened at all. Thor thinks Loki might be holding onto him tighter than he’s holding to the other. They stare at each other for a minute, Thor facing down the shadows behind Loki’s eyes with his own newly lopsided vision; Thor can see Loki’s mouth shift, can see his lips move like he’s thinking about giving voice to words, like he’s pressing them back behind the cage of his set jaw. Loki’s forehead creases, his mouth twists on a frown; and then he moves at once, his empty hand pulling away from Thor’s waist and coming up instead. Thor blinks, startled for a moment by the assumption that Loki intends to push him away, intends to put an abrupt end to this moment of unfamiliar affection; but Loki doesn’t shove him off, doesn’t retreat back across the room as Thor half-expects him to. He reaches up instead, his fingers spreading wide against the back of Thor’s neck and up into short-cropped golden hair; and he blinks as if it costs him something, and presses his lips together like he’s waging a war for speech.

“It does suit you,” he says, the words strangely soft in his throat, for how much visible effort it takes to speak them; and then his gaze slides up from his hand at Thor’s neck, the pained tension at his eyes softens in time with the set of his mouth, and then he’s just Loki, his hand pressing flush against the back of Thor’s neck and his mouth shaking and his eyes like the endless depths of the ocean, unfathomed and unreadable but sublimely beautiful all the same. Thor’s chest tightens, his breath catches; and then his fingers slide closer, his hand comes up to cradle the back of Loki’s head, and he just sees the other’s lashes dip into the surrender of expectation before he shuts his eye and leans forward to press his mouth to the quiver of Loki’s lips before him.

Loki’s mouth is warmer than Thor expected it to be. Loki has long been a creature of the cold, from the ice that so often chills his voice to the heritage of the blood running in his veins. Even his hand at the back of Thor’s neck is cool, trembling as if with a chill even as it tightens to keep them together, to linger in that connection of their mouths pressing together. But if the rest of him is cool his mouth is hot, an open flame enough to match the heat behind his eyes, and Thor finds himself pushing closer, leaning in, fitting his lips the nearer to Loki’s as if he can smooth away the anxious strain thrumming like unheard music in the other’s mouth against his. Thor’s hold is gentle, Loki’s is desperate; but they’re pressing close together all the same, neither of them flinching back or pulling away from this, the most contact Thor can remember having in long, unsung years of distance. Thor’s fingers flex, his hold at Loki’s waist shifts; and Loki sucks in a breath of air through his nose, and when he moves it’s to part his lips like he’s making an offering of his mouth to the other. Thor hears himself groan a low sound in the back of his throat, feels the heat of it coursing through his chest and tensing against that hold at the back of Loki’s head; and then Loki’s tongue is touching to his lips, is tracing fire against the line of his mouth, and Thor is giving way as readily, opening his mouth and turning his head into capitulation to the suggestion of Loki’s touch. Loki arches closer, his whole body curving in against Thor’s hold as if to fit himself against the other’s body, and where their lips meet he’s licking into the heat of Thor’s mouth, his tongue winding electricity through the other’s veins and humming heat like lightning into the air between them. Thor takes a step in, fitting his foot between Loki’s unsteady stance to steady them both; and then he lifts his hand from the other’s waist, and up to cup against his jaw instead, and when he leans into the kiss Loki quivers against him, shaking with something hotter with promise than the flinching bitterness that is usually so much a part of him.

There’s a thud behind Thor’s feet, the sound of the stopper finally tumbling to the floor as Loki’s grip on it gives way; but Loki’s fingers are closing on Thor’s shirt instead, his strength is bearing down to hold the other in against the heat of his body, and Thor doesn’t so much as flinch at the sound. He doesn’t need a token to demonstrate Loki’s presence when he has so much heat as proof instead.


End file.
